


a day (or two) in the life

by raeldaza



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/F, Retrospective, it's all gonna be okay kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-27 18:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13886658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raeldaza/pseuds/raeldaza
Summary: One day you wake up and everything is different, but everything is good.(Fifteen years later, Enjolras revisits her old high school.)





	a day (or two) in the life

**Author's Note:**

> Because we're not born as who we become, and sometimes it takes a little bit of time to make you into you. 
> 
> Set in random-America. Freshman is the first year in high school, which is about 13-14 years old. The present is sort of set in 2018, so the flashbacks to 15 years ago was like 2003, so there's a couple old-school references in there, and there's implied lack of internet access. Oh the joys!

“Okay, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Enjolras replies instantly. Her bare feet are tapping against the hotel carpet, grungy maroon and gold diamonds, almost matching her toenail polish.

“Oh right, that face has always meant sunshine and daisies for me, historically,” Grantaire responds, sarcasm oozing, and Enjolras feels that spark of fond annoyance that she’s now oh-so-familiar with.

“Nothing’s _wrong,_ ” Enjolras repeats, then hesitates. She’s still eyeing her feet instead of Grantaire, who she knows is lying right next to her, still under the covers. “I was just - I was just wondering if you were up for a change of plans.”

“I’m not married to the idea of seeing the world’s largest ball of twine, if that’s what you’re asking,” Grantaire replies. She yawns, large and loud, like most of the sounds and gestures she makes. “What did you have in mind?”

“Going to my old high school,” Enjolras admits, and turns in time to watch as Grantaire blinks in surprise.

“Why?” Grantaire asks, all curiosity and no judgment.

“I don’t know,” Enjolras answers honestly.

“Well, you’ve convinced me,” Grantaire says. After a moment, she quite literally rolls out of bed, falling with a loud thump on the ground and a responding unhappy groan. Enjolras smiles as Grantaire stands, rolling her joints and cracking her neck.

“I’ll be sure we still get to the airport in time,” Enjolras says.

“Whatever.” Grantaire flaps a hand in her vague direction.

“It’s just - this whole trip was for me, visiting my family, I don’t want to commandeer our last day—”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire interrupts. “It’s fine. Sounds fun. You can talk me through what a day in the life of freshman Enjolras was like.”

Enjolras barks out a laugh, unbridled and unintentional. “You do not want to know that.”

* * *

Enjolras stares in the mirror, but her hair doesn’t change.

She had overheard a couple of girls talking at the lunch table the day before, and one had _insisted_ that washing your hair with olive oil and raw egg yolks would tame frizz - but Enjolras spent forty five minutes in the shower the night before, leaving it in for just over a half hour, and she went to bed with it all still stuck in the towel, just like the girl had suggested - but the curls have dominated once again, frizzy and untamable.

She gazes forlornly at the scissors in her vanity, and the thought of just chopping it is so tempting - but as sure as she is that she hates her hair, she’s just as sure that her mom and schoolmate’s reactions aren’t worth the relief.

The hair goes up in a ponytail, her contacts go in, her teeth get brushed, and, once again, her hand stutters at the makeup brushes.

Her mom bought her a full kit, and she feels a little bad about how little she’s using it - but she doesn’t know what she’s _doing._ Would she like to cover her acne? Yes. Does she want to call out the color of her eyes, her only feature she likes? Of course. Would she want her eyelids to be as fun and creative and colorful as the other girls in her class? Why not.

She picks up brush and taps it in the blush, feeling wholly ridiculous, and brushes it lightly against her left cheek. She pulls back, and inspects herself in the mirror.

Too pink.

Frustrated, she turns on the water and wets a paper towel, and begins forcefully wiping it off. When she’s done, it’s far redder than before, and she can’t even tell if she got it off.

She throws the paper towel in the wastebasket and puts the blush back in her kit. Taking a step back, she inspects herself in the mirror.

Same bad posture, same long legs and short arms, same unattractive face and unshapely body.

God, she doesn’t _want_ to dress in expensive clothes, it’s such a waste of money when you can buy perfectly good, covering clothes for only a few dollars - but she just doesn’t _look right._ Maybe if—

“Enjolras,” her mom calls from outside the bathroom. Enjolras jumps a little, banging her knee against the sink. “Breakfast.”

* * *

“Room service breakfast fucking rules,” Grantaire says.

Or Enjolras assumes that’s what she says, because her mouth is stuffed with a buttered English muffin, and it mostly sounds like half choking consonants.

Enjolras raises an eyebrow from where she’s leaning in the doorway.

“You could, you know, sit down and enjoy it, like a normal person.”

“Normality?” Grantaire says, highly affronted, spewing little bits of muffin over the sink, and Enjolras smiles despite herself, shaking her head. A long, dry swallow, then, “You’re already waiting on me. I don’t want to make it longer.”

“It’s fine,” Enjolras dismisses, stepping into the bathroom and behind Grantaire. She tugs on a ringlet of black hair, watching as it bounces. “You have more to do in here.”

“No kidding. You have less hair on your head than I do my armpits,” Grantaire grumbles. “And all you need is blush and mascara to look like a goddess.”

“You don’t need anything to look like a goddess,” Enjolras says, hoping to be smooth, but by Grantaire’s laugh, probably just being cringy.

“Pot and kettle there, darling.”

“That saying doesn’t work with positives.”

“Says who? Do you have a degree in grammar? No, you don’t. You have a degree in bad manners and unconcerned confidence in yourself, unlike me, who—”

“Who is going to stab herself in the eye if she continues to pay that little attention to her eyeliner,” Enjolras interrupts firmly.

“You’re just jealous of my multi-tasking talents,” Grantaire mutters, going back to her eye.

Enjolras shakes her head, fond, a small laugh escaping her without her consent, and Grantaire beams at her through the mirror.

* * *

The only — and Enjolras means that word very literally — _only_ upside to the bus in the morning is that over half the kids are still mostly asleep, heads rocking against the windows. She rides it alone for most of the 40 minutes, but the final ten are spent next to Bobby Meadows, a boy who enjoys sitting next to her solely because she sits behind Carl Matthews, who Bobby likes to throw paper at.

As the bus pulls up the school, she shoulders past him, and he doesn't even make any comments, which officially makes this day starting better than most. It’s a brisk morning, and she shoves her hands in her pockets for warmth. She briefly contemplates going around back to see if the door is unlocked like it is about a quarter of the time. The door connects to the hallway next to her band room, and when she goes in that way, she’s able to sit alone in the quiet of the music hall until the first bell rings, instead of being herded into the cafeteria where she can stand alone in the cacophony of her peers until the bell.

Bobby Meadows followed her off the bus, though, and she doesn’t want to risk any commentary, so she goes through the front doors, arms wrapped around her middle for warmth.

In the ten minutes of standing the cafeteria, she gets a “hi” from Rebecca Landon as she passes by to get to her boyfriend and a nod from the boy she’s standing next to, some senior who she couldn’t name if forced on pain of torture.

On the plus side, she did gain a level in pong.

* * *

“This feels illegal.”

Enjolras glances up. Grantaire’s leaning up against the school’s red brick wall, her dark green peacoat a stark contrast. Her hands are in her pockets, and Enjolras honestly wouldn’t be able to guess whether it was because her fingers were cold or if she just thought it made her look cool.

“It’s only mildly illegal.” Enjolras turns back, her hands starting again to pick the lock. It’s been years since she’s tried this. “Like, no worse than shoplifting. Probably.”

Grantaire snorts. “Breaking and entering is—”

“It’s a public school during daytime hours; three hours ago, this wouldn’t be breaking and entering.” Her knees are starting to ache from kneeling on the cold cement. “It’s not like we’re robbing a bank or something.”

Grantaire hums, which, knowing her, probably doesn’t mean acquiescence, but whatever.

Almost a minute passes, the only sounds are the passing cars from the highway beyond the trees and the slight click of metal from the lock in her hands.

“When you said to visit your old school, this isn’t what I imagined.”

Enjolras glances up, hands still working the lock. “Are you complaining?”

Grantaire looks considering. “Yes,” she decides. “But just a little.”

“That’s better than usual with you,” Enjolras muses absentmindedly as the lock pops open into her hand. “Finally.” She stands up and brushes the dirt off her light-wash jeans. She turns to Grantaire who is now bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Ready to see my high school?”

“I’m right beside you.” Grantaire takes her hand, entwining their fingers.

* * *

“Hey, Enjolras!”

Enjolras’s head snaps up in surprise, surprise that does not abate upon seeing Maria Lopez walking towards her, smiling. Enjolras lifts a hand and gives a short wave, and then internally cringes at the awkward gesture.

“Uh, hi.”

“You did really well today,” Maria compliments, and Enjolras immediately flushes. “I’ve never been able to climb the rope past the first knot.”

Enjolras is intimately aware of the beads of sweat on her forehead and neck, the way her shorts are from the men’s department, and how her socks poke up just a little too much from her shoes.

“Thanks,” she answers, slightly belatedly. “I got strong arms.”

She cringes once again, but Maria laughs, a tinkling laugh that has Enjolras flushing again.

“I can see that,” Maria says, so easily, and her long, straight, shiny brown hair is falling over her shoulders in just such a way that Enjolras desperately wants to push it back. Swallowing a little, she looks up, but Maria’s face isn’t any better - she looks slightly older than she is, but her eyes are brown and bright, her face is perfectly symmetrical, the kind of girl that screams ‘popular basketball player’ when walking down the street, and there’s something about her lips, larger than Enjolras’s and pinker, that makes her want to touch them. Unthinkingly, Enjolras’s eyes move down her figure, which is athletic and just so oddly pretty—

With a cough, Enjolras snaps back to reality and realizes what she’s doing. She looks away in embarrassment, sure her face is on fire.

“Thanks,” she mutters, looking back down at her shoes.

“Have you ever thought of joining the basketball team?” Maria asks, and, oh — that’s what this is about.

“No,” Enjolras answers. Long evenings, sweaty and not totally clothed girls, team playing, more than a modicum of interest in winning - it’s a bad idea on several levels.

“Oh,” Maria says. “Okay, well, you should think about it!” With a smile and a little wave, she leaves Enjolras be, and heads off to the other side of the gym.

Enjolras watches her go before closing her eyes, slightly hating herself.

* * *

“Okay, freshman year - what was your first class of the day?”

“Gym,” Enjolras answers, and smirks at Grantaire’s sympathetic wince. “It wasn’t that bad. I was moderately in-shape at that point in my life.”

“Unlike now,” Grantaire jokes, poking at her stomach. Enjolras wiggles out of her way, laughing. She grabs at Grantaire’s hand slightly clumsily, given that she’s walking backwards and Grantaire’s arm is swinging with her walking movements, but she manages it, and threads their fingers together. She pulls Grantaire forward, and Grantaire lurches after her, letting out a breathless laugh.

Enjolras pulls her down two hallways, her sneakers squeaking slightly on the old, white tiled floors, though Grantaire is silent behind her. They reach their destination, and Enjolras skids to a stop, Grantaire lightly bumping into her.

“This,” Enjolras points, “Was my locker.”

Grantaire considers it. “Did you carve the hearts into the top?”

Enjolras hadn’t even seen them. “No. That must have been after I left.”

“Maybe it was a prime make-out spot, “ Grantaire guesses. “And they just had to commemorate it.”

“Likely.”

Grantaire grins at her obvious skepticism. “Do you not see the blinding sexual appeal of locker number 448, Enjolras?”

She can’t think of a witty reply, so she settles for a pointed stare, which just widens Grantaire’s grin. Enjolras sighs slightly, and Grantaire’s grin melts into something softer, a genuine smile, and she leans forward, kissing Enjolras softly. Grantaire turns her slightly, so her back is up against the locker. Her hands come up to frame her face, and Enjolras reaches her arms around Grantaire’s neck, pulling her closer. The kiss deepens for only a moment.

Grantaire pulls back slightly, face still only a few inches a way, her dark eyes bright under the fluorescents. Enjolras leans one foot up against the locker, hands still hooked around Grantaire, and feels like a teenager who has just learned what love can feel like.

“Maybe I can sort of see the appeal of the locker,” Enjolras says without really thinking it through, but it makes Grantaire laugh, so it’s fine.

She pushes off the locker and heads off again, being sure to grab Grantaire’s hand.

* * *

Enjolras is actually trying to work on the in-class worksheet, so she’s more than minutely annoyed with the groups around her. She isn’t sure why the teacher actually allows them to work in groups, given how little work is truly happening - but given the teacher is currently on a desktop computer with his headphones in, she probably shouldn’t be surprised learning isn’t on the forefront of his mind.

The group of boys to her right are talking about how one of them apparently got laid the week before - a fact that Enjolras highly doubts, given his account of her anatomy - and the group of girls to her left are busy trying debating Justin Timberlake versus Nick Carter.

She’s halfway through a short answer about Romeo and Juliet when she hears a “Hey, you,” from her left. It takes a couple of pencil jabs into her arm before she turns, annoyance immediately flaring.

“What?”

“What’s your vote?”

“On what?” she asks blankly.

She gets rolled eyes in response. “Justin versus Nick!”

In truth, she has absolutely no opinion. She doesn’t listen to either band, and, if she’s being truly honest with herself, has no interest in either of them aesthetically.

Or any man, really.

The same roll of self-revulsion flows through her, and she breathes it down. One day, one day she’ll deal with that properly, truly work through it - but that day would not be a random Thursday in April.

“Justin,” she answers, and half the girls cheer while the others groan.

* * *

“And here,” Enjolras points, “Is where Miranda Jenkins sat, who was vapid and had way too much fascination with WWII for comfort, but who had great hair. Next to her was this other girl named...oh God, I don’t know, something with a J, and she always dressed like she was in Grease, and I always sort of had a simmering thing for her. And there,” Enjolras points across the room, “Is where Ben Rose sat—”

“The guy you kicked in the balls senior year for throwing a grape in your cleavage.”

“Correct,” Enjolras confirms, “Though this is still Freshman year English. That’s when Mr. Mills was still teaching it, before he got fired for watching porn on the computer during class time. I had him my first year, and then I was in this room again senior year. I sat back there,” Enjolras nods towards a wall, “and sat next to Melissa Black.”

“Your first kiss with a girl!” Grantaire exclaims, a fist pumping in the air.

Enjolras lifts a brow. “You’re more excited than she was.”

Grantaire grins, a little mischievously, and smirks at the portrait of Shakespeare on the far side of the room. She grabs Enjolras’s hand, cradling it carefully, as Enjolras watches on, bemused. “Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap, to kiss the tender inward of thy hand, whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap, at the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand?”

“I don’t know Shakespeare,” Enjolras says, pulling her hand back. “But I’m pretty sure that didn’t actually make sense.”

“Sure,” Grantaire agrees easily, and leans forward to kiss her.

Enjolras lets her, hand reaching forward to tangle in Grantaire’s shirt, and she can’t help but smiling into the kiss.

* * *

“Hey Enjolras.”

“Hi Penny,” Enjolras greets, dumping her backpack next to her. “How are you?”

“Oh, getting by,” Penny says, pulling out her textbook. “Are you ready for the test?”

Enjolras goes to answer (that yes, of course she is, she studied for six hours and there’s nothing about cell division she doesn’t know, at this point), but she’s interrupted by the boy who sits in front of her leaning back into her space.

“Enjolras?” he says. “Of course she’s ready. That’s all you do, right? Study? You definitely don’t spend any time on your looks.”

The boys behind him go ‘oooo’ extremely loudly, and Enjolras finds herself flushing even as her anger rises.

“Stuff it up your ass,” Penny says, bored.

“Make me, one cent,” he shoots back, and the boys ‘oooo’ again, like that was actually an insult.

Miss Solomon tells them all to shut up in the next moment so they can begin, but Enjolras’s face is still burning, and even though they’re all idiots that she doesn’t care about in the slightest, she knows she’ll still feel this one for weeks.

Penny taps her on the shoulder as the tests are being passed out. Enjolras turns, and Penny gives her a sympathetic smile.

“You okay?” she mouths.

Enjolras nods and turns back, a little brittle.

* * *

“This was Miss Solomon’s room.”

“Oh, fuck, no way!” Grantaire exclaims. “The lady who told you dinosaurs died in Noah’s flood?”

“That’s also when Pangaea was destroyed,” Enjolras adds. “Can’t forget that.”

“Brilliant.”

Grantaire opens the door and dances forward, hands brushing up against the blue and tan desks as she makes her way further into the room.

It all looks so much smaller now.

Grantaire’s retreating further into the room towards the lab tables, and Enjolras watches her from the doorway silently, quietly leaning up against the doorframe, and just watching Grantaire make her way across the room. Her shoes are worn from their years of travel, down to their soles, and they make no noise against the tiled floor. The room is dark, but the black of the room can’t completely conceal her, her small frame a beacon.

Enjolras feels unbearably fond for a moment, to the point of biting her lip and clenching her fist, because there’s something almost painfully wonderful about openly watching someone you love for no purpose but the pure joy of it.

“Enjolras!” Grantaire calls. “Do you remember what a mol is?”

“A small woodland creature?”

“The number, smartass.” Grantaire points to a cabinet that Enjolras can’t really make out in the dark. “There’s a poster of it with a giraffe with science goggles on it.”

“Why not just go for the mole if doing an animal anyway?”

“Right?” Grantaire skips forward, making her way back to Enjolras. “6.022x1023, by the way.”

“Did you know before the poster?” Enjolras asks.

“The world may never know,” Grantaire says, and slings an arm around Enjolras. “So, what was this class like?”

Enjolras thinks for a moment, face scrunching up.

“Honestly? I don’t remember.”

“No?”

“I don’t have a single memory of this class,” Enjolras says with a shake of her head. “I feel like I may have once done an experiment with a...Nope, nothing.”

“Probably not missing much,” Grantaire says, gently pulling her from the room.

Enjolras lets herself be pulled. “Nah, probably not.”

* * *

“Enjolras - will you please step up to the board and do problem #98?”

Swallowing heavily, Enjolras steps outside the desk. Her friend in this class, Sam, gives her a thumbs up as she passing his desk, but the thumbs up isn’t going to help her factor out this equation.

“Okay, so,” she grabs a piece of chalk. “You have - uh, you have X-6 multiplying with X + 7. So, uh, you’d have 2X—”

“No,” the teacher interrupts.

Enjolras wipes away the 2 she had begun to write.

“Okay, so you have, uh.”

“X squared!” Someone calls out from the back.

“Quiet and let her do it,” the teacher snaps, but internally, Enjolras lets out a breath.

“Right, X squared. And then you have 7x, and then 6x—”

“Wrong,” the teacher interrupts again. She walks forward and grabs the chalk from Enjolras’s hand. “Go sit. Can anyone do this properly?”

Cheeks burning, Enjolras heads back to her seat, head down. Sam pats her arm as she passes, but she’s still humiliated, tears stinging as she plops back down at her desk.

It’s not that she’s _bad_ at math - but she certainly doesn’t _care_ about it, and she had fallen behind the last week or so of homework. She resolved to catch herself back up, hand clenching under the desk as she watches Ben Rose write X2+X-42 on the board.

* * *

“Okay, third period. Let me guess - math?”

“How could you guess?” Enjolras answers drily.

The door to room 278, the one with the massive quadratic formula literally painted on in red paint, stands before them. Enjolras tries the door, and to her dismay, it’s locked.

“The only teacher with any goddamn sense at this school,” Grantaire says. “Why is everything else unlocked?”

“What about this town gives you the indication anyone has common sense?” Enjolras shoots back.

Grantaire shrugs, then smiles. “You came out of it, didn’t it?”

Enjolras rolls her eyes. “Ha-ha.”

“Math, though. I would have loved to see you in a math class.”

Grantaire’s eyebrows are wiggling too much for Enjolras to let her get away with it. “Like you have any room to talk, Ms. what’s-4-times-8-again-enjolras-please-I-don’t-have-my-calculator.”

“Don’t be fucking rude,” Grantaire says back cheerfully.

Enjolras links arms with her. “It’s whatever, Grantaire, it’s why I bought you a portable calculator in the first place.”

“Cell phones exist now, you know,” Grantaire points out.

“It was a _gesture,_ ” Enjolras says, maybe too forcefully, because Grantaire just snorts.

“Still hypocritical, Ms. I-took-algorithms-for-dummies-as-my-math-credit-in-college.”

“Shut up, I graduated.”

“Indeed,” Grantaire says.

* * *

“Peanut butter, again?”

Enjolras takes a bite. Her hair is starting to get into her eyes again, and there’s something sticky on her side of the table.

“Uh huh,” she answers.

* * *

“What was your next period?”

“Lunch,” Enjolras answered. “I ate with the band kids. The less remembered of that, the better. But after that was Civics.”

Grantaire’s eyes light up.

* * *

Their homework is to write an essay about the ethics of dropping the atomic bomb. Enjolras knows little to nothing about this. Their textbook says it was for military defense and helped end the war, but she can't help but feel all the civilian lives are a bit glazed over. She considers researching a bit more about it on her own time, as she has considered about a hundred times in this class, but doesn't even know where to begin. 

“Enjolras,” Mrs. Kelsey calls. Enjolras pops her head up. “Would you mind coming up here for a minute?”

Enjolras nods and makes her way to the front. Mrs. Kelsey gestures for her to come behind the desk, and, bemused, Enjolras does.

“I noticed in your last paper a distinct interest in the struggles of women in the 1920s gaining the right to vote.”

“Yes, ma’am, I suppose so.”

“Do women’s issues interest you?”

Enjolras stares blankly, completely unsure how to answer.

“I mean,” Mrs. Kelsey amends, “Do you have any interest in feminism?”

Enjolras blinks a few times, mouth moving slightly as she thinks of how to respond. “I guess - I mean, I don’t really know what that is, I suppose.”

“Oh, wow,” Mrs. Kelsey says. Her eyes light up and her smile grows, and Enjolras is suddenly very aware that teachers are people too, and they have as many personal thoughts and interests and politics as the rest of humanity. “Well, do you have any interest in some out of class reading and tutoring? I would love to give you some books or articles to get you started. Only if you’re interested, of course.”

“I don’t see why not,” Enjolras answers.

* * *

“This was _the room where it happened!_ ” Grantaire screeches, and Enjolras winces.

“Be quiet,” she hisses. “Someone may still be here and I don’t want to be kicked out.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says, affronted, and still way too loud. “This is the _exact place_ where you first became an anti-capitalist, anti-government, socialist, anti-colonialist, intersectional feminist! This should be a _landmark.”_

“Maybe not all those words right away,” Enjolras amends. “And I think for something to be a landmark it needs to have cultural significance.”

“You will have cultural significance,” Grantaire counters easily, and a lump forms instantly in Enjolras’s throat. “But Enjolras! This is where you learned of Margaret Atwood, and Susan Lanser, Elaine Showalter, Virginia Woolf, Deborah E. McDowell, Dipesh Chakrabarty—”

“Are you going to go through every critic I’ve ever learned?” Enjolras asks, amused.

Grantaire throws her arms up in the air. “This is _historic,_ Enjolras. This is how you became,” her hands start to gesture wildly up and down Enjolras’s body. “You know, _you._ ”

“Yeah,” Enjolras says, smiling despite herself. “Good ol’ Mrs. Kelsey.”

"Did you send her an Easter card?" Grantaire asks.

"What the hell is an Easter card?"

"Like a Christmas card," Grantaire says, eyes big and wide, and Enjolras is 60% sure she's being fucked with. "I send them all the time."

Enjolras gazes at her skeptically, but Grantaire leaves her innocent expression pasted on, so Enjolras just lets it go. "I'll stick with the Christmas card."

* * *

Enjolras lets out a breath as she enters the band room.

It’s loud, there’s about three dozen kids shouting and running about, and she’s pretty sure that it’s not skunk she’s smelling - but she still feels more at peace here than she has anywhere else.

They’re taking a while to get settled that day, so she fiddles with the strings on her violin, waiting patiently on her chair in the back. The rest of the strings are seated, as usual, and the entire brass section is dancing in the back, which was also fairly normal.

Eventually, they start - they’re working on _Phantom of the Opera_ currently, as they’ll be the pit for the school’s musical this year.

She’s admittedly not all that talented, especially at the longer more complicated songs, but it easy to fake pulling a bow across the strings when she gets lost, and when they’re playing, she doesn’t have to talk, doesn’t have to think, and doesn’t have to focus on anything other than what she’s holding in her hands.

The teacher raises his hand, Enjolras settles the violin on her shoulder, places her chin down, raises her bow, and waits.

* * *

“My _home,_ ” Grantaire says fervently, rushing over to the piano.

Enjolras shakes her head silently, watching as Grantaire pounds out a passable version of _Ava Maria_ that is effortlessly better than most of their city’s chamber orchestra’s.

“You really should get back into piano,” Enjolras comments.

Grantaire rolls her eyes, and immediately begins to play chopsticks.

“Grantaire.”

Grantaire hits the keys louder.

“Grantaire.”

The tune turns to _Mary Had a Little Lamb,_ and Enjolras puts her hands up in defeat.

“Okay, okay, sorry I mentioned it.”

Grantaire’s touchy about her multitude of ¾ of the way completed talents, and Enjolras still doesn’t know her reasons on constantly giving up before becoming a professional in any of them, but she hopes that one day she earns the stories.

The melody smoothes out into a finishing of _Ava Maria,_ and Grantaire plays the final note beautifully, perfectly, before slamming all the keys down with a noise that makes Enjolras flinch.

“Beauteous,” Grantaire comments, sliding off the bench. “I would make Beethoven weep. Well, if he wasn’t deaf and dead.”

Enjolras looks around the room; it’s remarkably unchanged. The carpet, the paint, the arrangement - it’s like being transported back a dozen plus years.

She thought she might feel nostalgia here, she realizes. And she doesn’t.

It just feels small, confining, and, more than anything - unimportant.

“Why’d you quit violin?” Grantaire asks, startling Enjolras, who had been staring off into the distance.

“Oh, my roommate in college wanted silence all the time, and I wasn’t good enough or cared enough to keep it up.” She smiles, a little sadly. “I wouldn’t mind picking it up.”

“Buy a violin,” Grantaire suggests. “I’d learn to play, and we could do a duet of _The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”_

“Yeah,” Enjolras nods. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Grantaire steps forward and grasps Enjolras’s hand.

She puts Enjolras’s hand on her shoulder, and then moves her other hand to her waist. Grantaire moves her hands into position, and steps forward into Enjolras’s space.

“Love of mine,” she says. “This is a music room - we must dance. It 'tis a rule.”

“I’m following you,” Enjolras says. “But there’s no music.”

Grantaire clasps her hand tighter. “Hm. What to do about that.”

She starts to hum, and Enjolras laughs despite herself. She can’t make out the melody, but it’s something soft and soothing, probably a piano piece in reality.

They begin to sway back and forth, Grantaire occasionally moving her feet towards Enjolras’s, pushing them into a little circle.

They are mostly holding each other, just swaying back and forth, circling, foreheads touching, and Enjolras can feel the vibrations of Grantaire humming.

“There,” Grantaire murmurs. “Some good memories of this place.”

Enjolras reaches forward, and pulls Grantaire down into a hug. “I love you.”

“That’s gay,” Grantaire mumbles into her hair, and Enjolras laughs, a little uncontrolled.

She squeezes once more, before pulling back, eyes dry. “Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

It’s two minutes before the final bell rings, all Enjolras wants is to be gone.

In all honesty, she would give almost anything to never have to step foot in this place again. Someone purposefully tripped her on the way to band, she overheard someone joking about sexual assault again, she was ‘gently’ teased for the nine-hundredth time about her hair, she was asked again when she’d get a boyfriend, she isn’t learning anything that interests her enough to even begin to imagine what she’d get a degree in, she doesn’t know anyone that she wants to keep —

She knows it gets better.

That’s what she’s always told, and she has no reason to not believe it.

But as she stands at the door of the band door, waiting for the final bell, standing next to Jimmy, who she likes well enough but also who made a ‘your mom’ joke about three minutes ago, it’s a little difficult to imagine anything else.

The bell rings.

She has four more years of this, she thinks despondently. She walks out the doorway, and knows the next morning, she’ll be walking right back in.

* * *

“I'm ready to go if you are,” Grantaire says easily. “If you’re sure?”

Enjolras lets out a breath. “I’m ready.”

“K,” Grantaire says easily, threading their fingers together.

They head towards the exit, hand in hand, and as Enjolras takes a step out the door, she doesn’t even consider that she’ll never take a step back in, although it’s true.

* * *

Enjolras is about twenty minutes from her house when she even thinks to put in her headphones. Bobby has decided today was a great day to make every comment he can think of about her figure. She’s been steadfastly ignoring him for over five minutes, but even she draws the line at ‘bottle of sprite.’

She can hear the girls behind her talking about going out to a diner after school, and the boys from the back are throwing something around that’s hit her in the head twice, though she doesn’t know what it is, and it’s so loud that she has to turn her CD player all the way up in order to hear a single word.

Her head knocks against the window as they hit a pothole, and she forces herself to focus on the lyrics.

Her mom got her the CD for her birthday, and while pop is usually not her favorite, she sort of likes Kelly Clarkston anyway, and she sings the first few lines under her breath - something about being Miss Independent resonates with her. She could get behind being Miss Independent, Miss Self-Sufficient, Miss Keep-Your-Distance.

* * *

“Oh my God, this is a throwback,” Grantaire says, hand moving off the radio dial. 

She’s driving too fast, and Enjolras wants to forcibly grab her hand and glue it to the wheel, and while chewing gum is probably not that distracting, somehow it makes Enjolras all the more uneasy.

“We aren’t late for the flight, Grantaire, please ease up.”

“You don’t like Kelly Clarkston?” Grantaire asks.

“She’s fine, I haven’t thought of her since she came out with that song about sucking,” Enjolras replies, grabbing onto the panic bar. “Come on, Grantaire, why do you do this.”

“ _Miss Independent,_ ” Grantaire sings, slightly dancing in her seat. “Look, it’s about you.”

“ _Little miss apprehensive said, oh, she fell in love,_ ” Enjolras sings back, despite yourself. “Hey, you’re right, it is me.”

Grantaire’s grin is blinding, but Enjolras can’t help but to bark, “Eyes on the _road,_ please.”

* * *

Enjolras walks through the door of her house to the hum of the TV - her mom is in the living room, doing step aerobics.

“Hi Mom,” she calls.

“Hey,” she hears.

Nothing more seems to be forthcoming, so she heads into the kitchen, slightly tripping over a box her mom left in-front of the sink.

It was good to be home, she mused, pulling the pizza rolls out of the freezer. Even if home meant hiding in her room the entire night to avoid conversation, at least there was a place _to_ hide.

* * *

“God, I fucking missed this place,” Grantaire says, pushing the door open to their apartment.

“Ah yes, so much better than a hotel, with the having to clean up after ourselves and make our own bed,” Enjolras deadpans, even though, privately, she agrees wholeheartedly.

She walks up to her main window, where her collection of cacti seem to be thriving.

“Hey, Grantaire, how is the orchid?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire has disappeared into their bedroom. A pause, then, “Super dead.”

“Great. You’re telling Jehan,” Enjolras calls. She gets a grunt in reply, which makes her smile. She shrugs off her coat and throws it on the couch, and the heads into the kitchen.

“I’m going to make some corn dogs or pizza rolls or something and then get to work.”

Grantaire’s head pokes out. She’s shirtless now, indicating she was probably about to shower. Enjolras assumes, anyway - sometimes Grantaire is just prone to nudity.

“You gonna work out here or do you need to be alone?”

“Out here,” Enjolras shrugs. “As long as you don’t watch anything interesting.”

“Documentary about the stock market, got you boss,” Grantaire salutes.

* * *

The knock on her door makes Enjolras startle, and she accidentally kicks the algebra textbook off her bed. With a grumble, she yells and “Enter,” and bends to pick up all the papers.

“Hi honey,” her mom greets, taking a step in. “How was school?”

“What do you want?” Enjolras says, voice a touch too close to a snap, and she immediately feels a little guilty. Not enough to apologize, but enough that she’ll feel it in her chest for the next half hour or so.

“I was talking to Mrs. Robertson today,” her mom starts. She goes to sit down on Enjolras’s desk chair, which is currently occupied by a stack of old biology notes that she finally just reorganized. With a hand, her mom pushes them off the chair, and Enjolras watches in mild horror as they flutter to the ground.

“Mom, I just had those how I wanted them!” She jumps off the bed, ignoring the textbook as it slams on the ground once again, and kneels on the ground to pick them up.

“Then you shouldn’t have had them on a chair. Chairs are for sitting,” her mom says breezily. “Anyway, Mrs. Robertson said that the Freshman dance was coming up next week, but you haven’t talked about it at all.”

Enjolras freezes in place, just for a moment, and then continues to pick up the papers. Her heart is now hammering in her chest, and she could swear all the blood immediately rushed to her head, given the way it is now pounding, like she can literally feel the blood vessels panicking.

“It is. I wasn’t going to go.”

“Why not?”

“No one asked, for one,” Enjolras mumbles. She finishes restacking the papers, tapping them against the ground for alignment, and then puts them on the ground. With an unsteady sigh, she lets herself fall back against her bed, now sitting on the floor. She gains the courage to look up at her mom, who is staring at her in pity.

“Oh honey,” her mom says softly. “You know, if you’d just let me fix your wardrobe and teach you some makeup tricks, you could get those boys’ attention. You’d be pretty if would just try.”

Enjolras squeezes her eyes shut. “I don’t want boys’ attention.”

Her mom laughs, genuinely amused. “I really thought you’d be out of the ‘boys have cooties’ stage by now.”

“It’s not _that,_ ” Enjolras begins, too heated, and her fists clench at the way her mom rolls her eyes.

“Sure,” her mom agrees, obviously not believing a word, and Enjolras just lets the breath out. “Why don’t you just go with friends?”

“What friends?” Enjolras barks back, too fast, too angry. “I come home alone every single day and have never gone out. Not once. Who do you think I’m around all the time?”

“Stop being so dramatic." She laughs. “You go to school with thousands of kids. You have friends. And I’m not so naive to think you never sneak out,” she says with a wink, despite the fact that Enjolras has never, not once, snuck out of the house. If she had anywhere to sneak out _to,_ she’d most definitely be telling her mom about it, just to prove she’s not an entire loser. “You should just join more clubs.”

“I don’t like their clubs,” Enjolras replies, and hates the whine in her voice.

“Make your own!” Her mom’s hands are in the air, and she’s standing, and great, she might actually leave. “But I want to see pictures of you at that dance. At least one should be with a cute boy.”

She goes to pat Enjolras’s knee, and Enjolras moves it out of the way, spitefully petty. “What about a picture with one of my female friends?” Enjolras asks, because that’ll be easier, and that’s a safe way to ask in a way that only makes her heart flutter, not stop.

“Honey,” she says, disapproval and warning clear, “You don’t want people to talk about you _that_ way.”

She reaches further and pats Enjolras’s knee before heading out.

Enjolras stares at the closed door, silently, heart beating too slow and her stomach curling in that way that brings small tears to her eyes. She lets her gaze wander down to where her algebra textbook fell next to her. She sees problem #98, and promptly bursts into angry tears.

* * *

“Work work work,” Grantaire grumbles. “You’re practically Rihanna. Or Apollo. Or Peitharchia. Aergia laments your existence.”

“You know I only understand about ⅕ of what you’re saying, right?” Enjolras responds absentmindedly, fingers still on her laptop.

“I only pay attention to about ⅕ of what I’m saying, so it evens out,” Grantaire says, stopping behind her to press a kiss onto the top of her head, making Enjolras smile as she continues typing.

“What are you working on, anyway?”

“Combeferre said that if I wanted another set of eyes on the grant renewal application, I had to get it to him by tonight.”

“Is he still doing the budget for you?”

Enjolras hums a yes, re-editing the executive summary for the sixth time.

“Stop worrying so much.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, squinting at the screen. “I care about you deeply, but please shut up.”

She hears a huff and then feels a small kick at her foot, which she ignores.

“I’m just _saying,_ the center has been funded every year since before you even opened it, it’ll definitely get renewed again.” Another kick at her foot. “You know I’m right.” A kick at her knee. “Say I’m right.”

Enjolras sighs and turns in her chair, swiveling to face Grantaire, who is closer than Enjolras expected. “You’re right. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try hard. That’s why we keep getting it renewed. If I don’t have it exactly right, I’ll stress the entire time we're bowling with Joly, Bossuet, Musichetta, and Cosette tomorrow. Is that what you want?”

“Bahorel and Marius are coming too,” Grantaire adds.

“We’ll have to get another lane at the alley,” Enjolras says, momentarily distracted. “Remind me of that.”

“Don’t put it on me to remind you of anything,” Grantaire warns.

“Good call,” Enjolras says, swiveling back.

She gets a blessed four lines in when Grantaire interrupts again.

“By the way, your mom heavily implied you were planning on dumping me.” In Enjolras’s surprise and abrupt swivel back, she almost misses Grantaire’s, “That’s not a thing, right?”

“What'd she say?” Enjolras demands.

“Just that she wonders who’ll you bring home for next year's Easter.” Enjolras stare is horrified, while Grantaire’s is mostly thoughtful. “She could have been calling you a slut, but somehow, I really doubt it.”

“Oh God,” Enjolras says, burying her head in her hands. “I’m so sorry. She just - she has this image in her head that I’m going to be bring home - I don’t know, someone like Eva Longoria. She did this to my cousin, too. He brought home this girl who looked, you know, normal, and she said something about how she didn’t have the bone structure of Megan Fox.”

Grantaire laughs aloud, her eyes crinkling, curly hair falling in front of her face, and Enjolras feels some of the embarrassment seep out of her.

“She has higher standards than you do,” Grantaire says, still smiling. “I should be glad.”

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras mutters.

“It’s fine,” Grantaire answers, with a wave of her hand. “She makes a mean burrito. It makes up for it. Plus, she was nice enough the rest of the time.”

“Yeah, yeah. But still.”

“Still nothing,” Grantaire says. She starts to pad over to the kitchen, laying a quick hand on Enjolras's shoulder as she passes. “No plans on dumping me, then?” She asks, voice slightly drowned out by her opening the fridge.

“If I don’t bring you home for Easter next year, I’ll either be a failure or a slut, and we can’t have that,” Enjolras jokes, and earns Grantaire’s laugh from across the apartment. “Now shush, I want to go out with everyone tomorrow - let me work.”

“Of course, Apollo,” Grantaire answers.

* * *

It’s really quiet in the house, Enjolras thinks.

She thinks it every night, but with her dad gone and her mom out with friends most nights - it’s just so eerily still. There’s crickets and there’s the settling of the wood, but there’s an utter lack of human presence that just makes her feel so very alone. It wasn’t this bad back when she had a hamster; the creaking of its wheel was at least some comfort, no matter how small, but Joshua died last year and her mom refused to replace him with any type of pet despite her begging.

She breathes out, long and hard, and it echoes loud in her ears. She almost wants to cry again, and a few leak out before she’s able to close them tighter and stop them from falling. She clutches her pillow harder against her head.

“So dramatic, Enjolras,” she whispers to herself. It’s not like she doesn’t know there isn’t anything to cry about - she’s aware enough of the world to know she has it pretty good, and it’s not like anything even happened—

But she still wants to cry.

There’s no one there that would hear her, so she’s tempted to just that, but she wants to be better than tears, better than emotions, better than what she is or who she is, whatever that may be.

She wants—

She wants to makes herself into a different person, one she could like, or respect, or even understand; but goddamn it if she knows how.

She burrows her head deeper and wishes for sleep.

* * *

“Tolkien, get off the bed.”

At a wave of Enjolras’s hand, the cat scampers off the bedspread, darting out the door.

“Hey,” Grantaire objects, appearing in the doorway. She’s ready for bed, hair lazily pulled up, face clear of her grunge makeup, clad in her plaid pajama bottoms and an oversized sweatshirt from the community college she taught at for a few months, and something about the comfortable wornness of it all makes Enjolras want to go over and hug her and just not let go. “That cat has every right to be there.”

“You wouldn’t say that if she was sleeping in the middle of your side,” Enjolras points out reasonably. She picks up the corner of the bedspread and slides in, the sheets cool against her skin. She’s taken to wearing shorts and a bra to bed - although she’ll never admit it, part of the reason is because it tends to make the amount Grantaire touches her in the night go up exponentially.

“You could always sleep around her,” Grantaire says, making her own way over to the bed. “The shapes you’ll bend into will be great for stretching your spine out. You’ll never struggle with yoga again.”

Grantaire jumps onto the bed, jostling Enjolras up a few inches. She settles in like always, a little vigorously, making the entire bed shake, and Enjolras watches with fond exasperation. She eventually stills maybe a foot away, eye-to-eye.

She goes quiet a moment and settles a hand on Enjolras’s waist.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” Enjolras answers.

Grantaire’s thumb absentmindedly caresses her hipbone while they stare at each other, the moment silent but full, and Enjolras finds her hands coming up to brush a lock of hair out of Grantaire’s eyes.

“Thank you for indulging me today,” she says. “It was probably boring.”

“Nah, I liked imaging little you running around that place, ruling over are your vastly inferior classmates.”

Enjolras huffs a laugh and flips over. Grantaire gets the message and curls up behind her.

“You have a very skewed image of me.”

“Nah,” Grantaire says, and presses a kiss on her shoulder. “It’s you with the skewed image.”

Privately, Enjolras doesn’t want to convince her of the truth, so she just hums in response and lets the length of the day fully fall on her. She’s relaxed and oh so ready for sleep, and the faint sounds of a train outside and Tolkien pawing at their kitchen door are lulling.

“You’re so warm,” Enjolras mumbles into the pillow. “Can you backup a little?

Grantaire snuggles closer, pressing into the spooning position so there’s nare an inch between them, tightening her arm around Enjolras’s middle.

Enjolras’s eyes are still closed in exhaustion, but she manages to roll them under her lids anyway.

Grantaire goes to laugh, but her head is buried in Enjolras’s shoulder, and she gets a mouthful of hair. She splutters, spitting it out, and Enjolras finds herself rumbling a laugh.

“Serves you right,” she mumbles.

The arm around her tightens.

Grantaire’s chin hooks around her shoulder. “Hush, you,” she whispers into her ear.

“You love making my life difficult,” Enjolras says into the pillow.

“Hey,” Grantaire says, mildly affronted and way, way too awake. “You love your life.”

Enjolras finds herself pulling Grantaire’s arm around her tighter, and raising her hands to her lips. A feather light kiss, and then sleep overtakes her.

**Author's Note:**

> I was real hesitant about posting this one for a couple different reasons, but I think we sometimes could use the message that the future isn't always worse. 
> 
> Anyway, kudo/comment if you'd like, it's always great encouragement. Say hi over [here](http://raeldaza.tumblr.com) if you so want.


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